DESCRIPTION (provided by investigator): This application addresses the broad Challenge Area (04) Clinical Research and the NIA specific Challenge Topic 04-AG-105: Development of experience-based measures of well-being. There is an interdisciplinary resurgence of interest in the correlates and consequences of subjective and objective well- being in old age. In part, this interest is fueled by new evidence about mind-body interactions, including associations between affective well-being, immune functioning, cardiovascular illness, and longevity. Few longitudinal national studies of the older population include well-being measures in their protocols. This reflects a longstanding debate within and between disciplines about the validity and comparability of subjective versus objective scales and the lack of standard survey measures. Thus, the current challenge is to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess experienced well-being in older adults. Ideally this instrument could be included in a survey toolkit of subjective and objective measures so that future researchers from different disciplines can begin to address knowledge gaps about well-being and health. Our approach to this challenge involves several innovative steps. In particular, we: 1) create a new survey measure of experience-based well-being for older adults to address the limitations of existing measures and link the new measure to health-related activities;2) undertake extensive psychometric analyses of existing HRS data on cognitive and affective subjective well-being to provide a benchmark to assess the added-value of the new measure and to derive optimized subjective scales to add to a comprehensive survey toolkit;3) collect data on our new measures of objective and subjective well-being in two studies with older adults (telephone and in-person: N = 960);4) evaluate the reliability and validity of the new instruments using data obtained in the two studies and determine their unique potential to differentiate subgroups with different levels of health;and 5) conduct pilot work on an innovative survey measure of observed (behavioral) well-being. Together these new studies and analyses will provide answers to the following questions: Does our innovative survey measure of experienced well-being provide reliable and valid information? Is it possible to optimize the current HRS measures of cognitive and affective subjective well-being without compromising reliability and validity? Are objective and subjective components of well-being sensitive to socio-demographic factors and health disparities? What are the associations among objective and subjective components of well-being in old age? The outcome of the proposed project will be an innovative, well-documented, and validated toolkit for the assessment of objective and subjective well-being in large surveys of older adults. The application of this toolkit, especially in multidisciplinary longitudinal surveys, will increase our understanding of the relative importance of the experience-based, cognitive, and affective components of well-being for health in old age and contribute valuable evidence to effectively shape public policy and intervention strategies. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative longitudinal study of the population over 50, this project will identify markers of subjective, experience-based, and observed well-being associated with health outcomes. Different aspects of experienced well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, positive affect, time invested in pleasurable activities) have been linked to immune functioning, cardiovascular illness, brain functioning, and longevity. We will develop and test parsimonious measures of experienced well-being suitable for large multidisciplinary surveys so that population trends in well-being and subgroups at risk can be studied.